


Varieties of Condolence

by rivendellrose



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Gen, averted canon death, mild AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 09:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7679647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivendellrose/pseuds/rivendellrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events at the Starfire Wheel, Delenn's decision to return to Babylon 5 is not easy on those of her own people who love her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Varieties of Condolence

**Author's Note:**

> Set just after the events of "Moments of Transition," with one slight AU change.
> 
> References some parts of the Neroon/Delenn stories written by [hearts_blood](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/hearts_blood) and me, the majority of which can be found [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/531570/chapters/942885). Knowledge of the previous stuff really isn't necessary, but if you like this... there's a bit more.

Delenn had only three words for the physicians who carried Neroon out of the circle: "He must live." True, that would mean another set of problems, another chance for Shakiri and his followers to say that what had happened in the Starfire Wheel had not counted, not really. But after the humiliation they had suffered, after all of Minbar saw Shakiri throw himself from the circle while a small, weak priestess stayed in, and all of Minbar saw Neroon of the Star Riders hand the unconscious priestess back out of the white fire and take her place, and swear allegiance to her caste, and shout for all to follow her... well, after that she suspected that the Warrior caste might see a need to rearrange its hierarchy. She suspected it would not push too hard. She suspected the war was truly over.

She also suspected that Neroon would not be happy to have lived, having publicly renounced his caste before all of Minbar. He had not asked to be removed from the burning light. He had walked in believing it would be his death, and accepting that fact. Well. So had she. He had made the decision for her, and she, in turn, had made it for him. If he wished, they might be equally full of righteous indignation at each other. She hoped it would not come to that.

Lennier took most of her weight on his shoulders, and more carried her than supported her as they followed the physicians on the short walk to a nearby hospital. She heard the whispers all around her, but did not stop to address the crowd that gathered to watch her slow, painful progress. It took all the energy that remained to her just to stand somewhat straight and put one foot in front of the other.

Her injuries, in the end, were not so bad. She was weak from the draining power of the wheel, and soothing ointments had to be applied to her skin several times an hour. She felt as if her mouth would never stop feeling parched, as if her vision would remain forever dimmed by the brilliance of the light that had beat down on her. But she would live.

"What about Neroon?" she asked every time a physician came to check on her. "He must live."

The physicians bowed and mumbled empty, uncertain words. The warrior was strong, but his injuries were severe. The matter was in Valen's hands. At last, after hours of this, she was visited by a physician who only inclined his head respectfully to her, listened patiently to her question and her increasingly strident demand, and said, "The warrior lives. He will not regain consciousness for some time - he must be allowed to rest. And when he wakes he will suffer greatly, and will continue to suffer for some time. But unless he ends his suffering himself, he will live."

"You must keep him from doing that."

"Must I?" The physician tilted his head at her, more curious than anything else. "Tell me, Delenn of the family Mir - do you think it is a mercy, what you have done to this man? Do you suppose he will thank you, or be glad in his heart of the gift you've forced back into his hand?"

"Life is sacred," Delenn snapped. "You of all people, physician--"

"I of all people, yes." The physician folded his hands together and stared solemnly at her for a moment. "But what are any of us without our place in caste and clan? If he had lost only his hands--"

A strangled sound like a keening escaped Delenn's throat. The hands of a warrior were most central to his being. Without an eye, without hearing, without even legs a warrior might go on - artificial limbs could be built, and his experience and intense phsyical training would allow him to go on, allow him to still be of use and fight and defend his people. But no artificial hand could be built that would match the skill and the practiced grip of a warrior. No creation of metal, however cleverly designed, could mimic the artistry with which Neroon had been trained to wield the denn’bok. 

Still the physician carried on talking over her. "If he had lost only skin and flesh, perhaps he could still carry on. A warrior without a leg may still ride, and a warrior without an arm may learn to fight with the other arm. But a warrior who is no longer a warrior? You have asked a great deal of this man by insisting he live. I hope he forgives you for it."

"What do you mean about his hands? Tell me what condition he is in!" 

The physician met her eyes calmly. "What do you expect, Delenn? Very well. He has his hands, still, and his legs, too. But he is burned over a good percentage of his upper body, and his head, shoulders, and face will always be scarred. His chest and back, too. The upper tines of his crest are burned, charred. If he were younger there would be more pain, but the crest might regrow. As it is..." The physician shrugged. "I never saw him up close before the injuries. They tell me he was a handsome man. I hope he was not too proud of that."

“Do you feel nothing for him? No sympathy? Not even for a man who just ended a terrible civil war?”

“Of course I feel for him.” The physician looked affronted, even a little angry at her implication. “I am a Worker. Medicine is my craft first, and a theoretical art second. I have tended men and women burned far worse in industrial accidents in the line of their duty, and I have likewise tended worse burns since the Warrior caste began to destroy our cities - your people were not the only ones to suffer in this war, you know. My feelings of gratitude, respect, and pity for Satai Neroon’s condition will not heal him. My knowledge and experience will. I leave the lighting of candles and recitation of prayers in the capable hands of your caste. My job is to keep my head clear so that I can keep him alive, as you were just now insisting was so important, and heal him as well as possible."

His calmness recalled Delenn to herself, and she bowed, deeply impressed. "Forgive me, please. I should not have implied you do not know your duty."

"There is nothing to forgive," the physician assured her with an expression that relented slightly in its stiffness. "There is an important bond between you. A line of fate, perhaps you would say."

Delenn felt a sudden chill through her bones. "What?"

"He saved your life. Now you work to save his."

"Oh. Yes. Yes, of course." Embarrassed, Delenn lowered her gaze from that of the physician, who seemed to have read something in her, some hint of her momentary uncertainty. Certainly there was a connection between her and Neroon - in their current life, their always had been. The plan of the universe seemed to be to always draw them together at the changing of the tide, pit them against each other at the moment they both doubted most deeply, yearned most keenly, reached farthest out of their usual realm. But there had been a moment when she had misread the physician's meaning, when on hearing his words she had feared that he meant a bond of love as well as fate.

"As for yourself," the physician continued, "there is little more I can do. I will give you a jar of ointment that you must rub gently on your burned skin three times a day, or more if you like."

"And what of the dimness in my vision? Everything seems darker now than I know it should."

He shook his head. "That is beyond my power to help. Perhaps, when you go back to the Humans, they will have a way. I've heard their medicine goes beyond ours, because they are less sturdy in body than us."

Delenn thought of Stephen Franklin and all the tests he had run after her transformation, how he often said he didn't know what to make of her strange, artificially hybridized biology. "Perhaps," she allowed.

The physician and his people let her in to see Neroon a little later, and her soul was wounded by what she saw. The burns were terrible, and just as extensive as she had been told. She could only be grateful that Neroon was still unconscious, and would be kept so, in a chemically-induced healing sleep, until he could safely be revived. She wanted to touch his face, but, after a moment's hesitation, contented herself with laying her hand on his, which had blessedly been protected by his thick leather gloves.

As soon as she got back to the rooms she'd been granted, she made an important call.

The next day she spoke to the Gray Council. Following that meeting, she returned to the hospital and was relieved to find another familiar figure waiting in Neroon's room. Shaal Mayan stood with her hands neatly folded, her thin shoulders straight and steady, but when she turned to Delenn her face was weary, and her eyes rimmed in red.

"I'm sorry, dear friend, to make you travel so far on such short notice," Delenn said.

"Don't be. You know I would travel much further to see you again. And under such circumstances... Delenn, I thought you would die. I watched the live broadcast, just as all our people did, and I thought I would stand there, helpless, a million miles away, and see the end of you. Ashan had to hold me to keep me from throwing myself at the viewscreen and breaking it to bits."

"And a good thing he did," Delenn remarked, imagining Mayan's tall, broad-shouldered husband picking her bodily off the ground and holding her as they watched. "Otherwise, you would not have seen the rest."

"And I would have thought you dead. He is, as always, the more sensible of us." Mayan tried to smile, but tears welled in her great dark eyes. "Delenn... I am so sorry. Both for what you had to endure, and for the fact that our people could not bring themselves to peace without that sacrifice. But I am so grateful you were saved, even..."

"Even if it nearly cost Neroon his life to do so?"

Mayan drew a deep, slow breath. "He always was willing to do anything for you."

"He was, long ago. Since then, until very recently, we have hardly been able to stand in the same room."

"And yet, he would have died for you." Mayan turned toward the figure on the bed. "How wrong I was, when we were all children. How foolish, to think a warrior couldn't be worthy of you."

"He was worthy, and always has been," Delenn said. "But our paths must part again. I must ask a favor of you, my dear friend."

"Anything."

"Care for him. When he is released from the physicians' care, he must have somewhere to go... and now that he has forsworn the warrior caste, I can think of no one better suited, no one I would trust more, than you."

A glint of Mayan's clever mischief lit in her eyes. "Why not yourself? You owe him your life, Delenn, do you not think it would be fair of you to tend the man in his suffering?"

"Fair indeed, but not possible. I must return to Babylon 5."

"Delenn--"

"There is much to be done, Mayan."

"Too much to stay with the man who loves you?"

Delenn lowered her eyes, then, with an effort, raised them again to meet Mayan's gaze steadily. "There is another who loves me, too, and I have given my heart there."

"To--" Mayan's face drew in and darkened. "No. Delenn, no. You cannot still believe--"

"I do, with all my soul."

"There are other ways. This prophecy, all you have done already must surely be sufficient. The universe would not ask for you to marry a stranger."

"John Sheridan is no more a stranger to me now than you are."

Mayan recoiled as if slapped. "You do not mean that. This stranger, this barbarian you've known only a few years - you cannot know him as well as you know me. I've known you since you were only a little child learning her first prayers."

"Sometimes," Delenn said as gently as she could, "time is not the only part of knowing someone that matters. Dukhat looked into my soul and knew all of me in only days."

"But he was one of us! The greatest of us since Valen, of course he could do that!"

"Yes,” Delenn agreed. “And John Sheridan is an equally great man.”

Mayan gasped, as if Dukhat had been her teacher, as if _she_ , not Delenn, had worked at his side and held him while he died. Part of Mayan’s power as a poet rose from her ability to immerse herself entirely in whatever she wrote, to care as deeply for those far-off times and places and people as she did for the moment she lived in, the life she herself had led. It did mean, however, that arguing with her became that much more difficult for how strongly she felt about the things she had only heard and learned second-hand. “You cannot mean that,” she repeated.

Tired, Delenn relented. There was no point in arguing with Mayan when she got like this. “They are very different, Mayan. But I believe in him. And I love him.”

“What about Neroon? You used to believe in him, too, and love him so deeply you would flout the authority of our temple guardians to be with him.”

“And later, I learned that I was wrong in that belief. Wrong, at least, to believe we could be together.”

“But he has changed...”

"Yes,” Delenn admitted. “When we met to end the war, I was surprised to see how he had changed from the previous times we had come together since our love fell apart. I look at him now...”

"And what do you see, Delenn?" Mayan asked, low and patient - her 'poet's voice,' Delenn recognized - the one she used to draw people in.

Delenn sighed. "I see the past; a love that enchanted and delighted me when I was young and a strong heart that I meant to pair my own to for all time. And I see a man who stood with me to end a war. And," she admitted, "I see possibility. He has changed so much. I feel that what... came between us, years ago, would cause us no trouble now. "

She felt rather than saw Mayan move to her side, her old friend so close she could smell the warm, resiny scent of her perfume and the soft, familiar scent of her beneath, and feel the soft brush of Mayan's sleeve against her own. "Then try again, Delenn. I had hoped, when I found you here--"

"I know what you hoped. And I know you meant it for love of me. Of both of us, even. But I cannot stay, Mayan, and I cannot give up what I have waiting for me in hope of what might become of something past."

"What is waiting for you? A stranger? A Human murderer? Delenn--"

Delenn shook her head sharply. This was not an argument she would tolerate. "No, Mayan. This is not a matter for debate. I love John Sheridan. If you were willing to know him as more than a rumor and a story, you would understand my decision. Or perhaps you would not - that is your right - but I would hope you have learned enough from the past not to try to unmake my choices for me again. "

"But Neroon--"

"Is honorable and worthy, and part of my heart will always love him. It tears at my soul to see him like this. But it does us no good to look forever backward, doubting decisions already made. If matters were different... but there are as many such possibilities and doubts and questions as there are stars in the sky or snowflakes in a winter storm. I made my choice, and I do not regret it." She reached her hand out again toward the black glove that covered his hand, and this time brushed her fingers against it as lightly as a breath of air. "I pray that Valen keeps and guards him, through this life and the next. And you as well," she added, turning to her friend and pressing her hand to her heart. 

But Mayan pushed her away angrily. "I don't want your blessing! I want you here, at home, with a man who deserves you! Think, Delenn! How can you go? Your world needs you, your people need you. You say you have much to do. What about us? This war has burned us all, Delenn, not just him, and it will take years for us to rebuild what has been lost. You should be here, helping us."

"No. There are greater battles, greater matters at stake than one world and one species--"

"Traitor," Mayan hissed. Her dark eyes blazed. "What can matter more to you than your own people and the friends who love you and need you?

"I have other friends than you, Mayan, and at the moment, they need me more. That is the end of this conversation. I will say no more. I must go."

Delenn turned, but Mayan caught her arm, holding her and trying to pull her back. "This is all your fault! If you had not broken the council, if you had stayed and taken your place as Dukhat's successor, as he wished you to do, none of this would have happened! In my life I have hurt others and caused pain, but I have always stayed and tried to fix what I made wrong. You just left us - you turned your back on Minbar and went to play in the stars with our enemies."

"I fought our oldest enemies," Delenn responded without turning back, her voice cold as steel. "And I defeated them."

"A thousand light-years away, yes! While here at home our cities burned, our people died, and our dreams shattered for lack of a leader who would guard them and care for them. Don't think we in Arduma were untouched by this war, Delenn. Don't think we didn't fear every day that Shakiri's warriors would fall on us, burn the village that has stood on that mountain for thousands of years, and force us all out into the ice-fields. And your own city! What would your father think, Delenn, to know you looked away while Yedor burned? But I trusted you, still. I prayed for you, lost and far away. When people said you had caused these things, I defended you, as I always have. And when you came back, I believed that you were here to stay, to end the suffering you had caused with your selfishness, and lead us toward something better. To live up to your promises and everything Dukhat entrusted to you. But instead, you're leaving us again! To be with _Starkiller_ and his allies. You might as well spit on your teacher's memory."

With a quick jerk, Delenn freed her arm from Mayan's grasp, and then whirled on her friend again. "Enough, Mayan. No more! You are my oldest friend, and for that I will forgive you what you've said, but nothing more. Be silent, now, or you and I are no longer friends."

For a horrible moment, Delenn thought Mayan might call her on the threat and force her to make good on it. Her friend's jaw clenched, her brown eyes burned, and she looked on the verge of speaking again, but then she closed her eyes, swallowed, and turned quickly away down the hall.

Delenn looked after her and sighed. Then she turned to Lennier, who had stood silently at the side of the room, pretending not to witness the whole exchange. “Go after her, Lennier,” she said softly. “If I go, we will only fight again, and Mayan’s anger will never ease so long as I press her. But I must know whether she will care for Neroon, so that I may make other arrangements if she will not.”

“What about you?” 

“I will stay here, and wait for your return. And, Lennier? Tell her that I love her still, and will be glad to speak to her again as soon as she is ready. But my decision on this will not alter. She must know that.”

Lennier bowed, and hurried out into the hall. He was lucky, as it happened - Mayan had not gone far. He found her in a little chapel at the end of the hallway, and he was immediately struck by how strange it felt to find himself kneeling next to Shaal Mayan, the greatest living poet of Minbar, as she knelt, bent over on herself and weeping.

“She will leave no matter what I say, won’t she?” Mayan asked. Her beautiful voice was thick and rough with tears.

“Yes,” Lennier told her. “She has chosen her way. And it is not in Delenn to change course once she has made up her mind.”

Mayan laughed, low and bitter. “I know that better than most.”

“You and she have been friends for many years.”

“Since childhood,” Mayan agreed. “We met in temple. She was so small and quiet back then, I always thought I would be her protector. But I never really understood when we were girls how fierce and determined she is. She never yields. She has a spirit made of steel. She doesn’t need me.”

“Perhaps not in the way you imagined,” Lennier suggested, his eyes respectfully lowered to the ground. “But she still has need of you. She is very concerned over Neroon’s continuing care until he is healed.”

“She’s looking for a sop to her conscience. I think she wants to leave before his eyes open, because she’s afraid what she will do if she meets his gaze.”

“Perhaps,” Lennier allowed, though he privately doubted this. Delenn did not often have cause to doubt her own force of will. 

“So she insists. She will make me be party to her departure, and make me pass the message that she has gone back to the Humans. Does he know that she plans to marry one of them?”

Lennier felt proud of how little he reacted to those words. “I don’t know.”

Mayan sighed. She sat back, pressing the heels of her hands into the hollows of her eyes, and when she released this pose after a long moment she looked a little calmer. “You are her student, her aide. You know Starkiller, you have no doubt worked with him and his people in the years you’ve served her. What do you think of this choice of hers?”

In the silence following her question, Lennier heard the answer of his heart. He heard his own voice say that he thought it was foolish, that John Sheridan, while a decent and respectable man for a non-Minbari, would never know Delenn as fully as one who loved her should. He would never respect her as he ought. He would never see the full truth and beauty in her, feel the proper awe and truly understand the magnitude of the fact that Delenn of Mir, one of the greatest Minbari ever to live, had deigned to lower herself, change herself purely to create peace with his people, and had chosen to love him of despite his inferiority and his clear lack of understanding. He imagined himself telling Shaal Mayan, who would surely sympathize, how angry he felt when he saw how Sheridan presumed upon her, how he treated her like any other woman, how completely he failed to appreciate the gift he was being given. The man was a fool. Though brave, he was weak. Though clever, he was without wisdom. He had no patience, no humility, no spiritual depth. When Shaal Mayan had called him a barbarian, she had told the truth. 

But those words could not be spoken. Never, and certainly not to Delenn's oldest and dearest friend, whom Delenn had specifically sent him after to build the beginning of a reconciliation. Lennier was looking at perhaps the one person in all the universe who could fully appreciate and understand the depth of his rage and jealousy at John Sheridan, and who would doubtless agree with every word he had to say against him, but duty prevented him from breathing the first word of it. Worse, what if Mayan, with her legendary insight into the minds and souls of others, somehow saw through his piety and devotion to the hopeless love that he carried close against his heart? While she certainly thought Sheridan entirely inappropriate as a husband for Delenn, she would no doubt be just as justifiably horrified by the thought of Delenn's aide harboring feelings beyond his proper position. To Mayan, Delenn belonged with Neroon, a man who had known her and loved her nearly as long as Mayan herself had, a brave and valiant and honorable warrior who had only a few days before ended the war between the castes and plucked Delenn from the grip of death, giving himself in return. What had Lennier done? He had stood by, shocked and horrified into a pillar of stone.

He couldn't disagree that Mayan's choice for her friend seemed a great deal more appropriate, and more likely. So he forced himself to find the sides of the truth that would best serve Delenn's purposes.

"I have known John Sheridan for several years," he said slowly, "and I have found him to be a brave warrior and a good and generous leader in the manner of his people."

"'In the manner of his people,'" Mayan repeated, and sniffed dismissively. "What does that say?"

As uncomfortable as he was with the idea of defending John Sheridan’s position with Delenn, Lennier knew that only one answer to this question was possible. “All that any of us can say of ourselves. We are all what we are in the manner of our people. Even you, Shaal, great as you are, can be a poet and singer only in the manner of Minbar. You may be heard on other worlds and appreciated by the people of other species, but you can be no other than a Minbari poet, because that is your context. However far you travel on your tours, you carry Minbar with you. We are all what we are, and can be no other.”

Mayan met Lennier's gaze then, and for the first time in their conversation he felt as if she truly saw him rather than looking through him to see Delenn. Her eyes narrowed for an instant, and then widened. "And what of Delenn?" she asked in a low and gentle voice. "Is she, too, only what she is?"

His heart supplied an answer before his mind had time to reconsider its wisdom. "Delenn, too, is only what she is. She cannot change, anymore than we can. But what she is, is greater than anything either of us can comprehend. If you will forgive the impudence of my saying it, Shaal."

A sad smile graced Mayan's lips, and her dark eyes softened as she reached out to touch Lennier's sternum lightly with her fingertips. "I forgive it, because I know that, where Delenn is concerned, nothing could be truer. If I am great, it is because of my words and my voice - little things, things on which I have had to work long and hard, and still must work further. My songs have garnered no small amount of praise and recognition, but I could be acclaimed by all of Minbar and our colonies and allies combined, and still feel myself small before her. The little girl I befriended because she was so quiet and shy, because pretending to protect her made me feel stronger and safer and less afraid in the temple where we were taught, has long since proved herself far braver and far more powerful than I could ever hope to be. My carefully-constructed poems may change a few hearts and sway a few minds, but her quickest glance, her softest word, her briefest glance, moves the universe."

"She is a great leader," Lennier murmured, bowing his head. But Mayan raised her hand to his chin and lifted it gently, forcing him to meet her eyes again.

"Yes," she said. "And like so many leaders, her soul calls to the hearts of all those around her. We smaller glimmers of spirit cannot help but be drawn to her and be filled with both despair and hope at her greatness. Hope because a universe that contains her cannot help but be gentler and better than we fear in our worst moments, but despair, too, because we will always be too small for her full notice, yet we cannot help chasing her light through the darkness."

"I... do not ask to be greater."

"No. But you would not mind, I think, if you could be so great as to be worthy of more of her attention." 

Lennier closed his eyes and pulled back, drawing in on himself as if wounded by her words, but Mayan stopped him with another touch to his cheek, light and gentle. There was something in her skin, something in her scent, that reminded him so much of Delenn, he could not refuse her. 

"There is no shame in it, Lennier. I feel the same, and I have known her almost as long as either of us have lived. There is no shame in loving the great, because it is the calling of our souls. We look to them, and we love precisely because we wish we were as noble and holy as they are. We cannot all of us be heroes and saints worthy of the oldest songs. There must be common people, little farmers and monks and singers for those heroes and saints to rescue, defend, and save. And you are a true seeker. I can see in your eyes, you love her with a true heart and want only to serve her. Be careful that you keep that, my friend, and you will always be worthy to stand at her side."

She bent forward, then, and kissed a benediction onto the flat of his forehead. The smell of incense and sweet resin enveloped him, and he closed his eyes so that for a single, blessed moment he could imagine that it was Delenn's lips that rested on his skin, Delenn's hands that cupped his shoulders. 

When she sat back after a moment that stretched into eternity, Lennier coughed slightly, trying to gather himself before he spoke. "She... Delenn asked that I deliver one last message to you before you go. She said to tell you that she loves you still, and will be glad to speak to you whenever you are ready. But she will not alter her decision. She will leave."

"And she will marry the stranger John Sheridan. Yes. I knew that, as soon as she said it." Mayan smiled at Lennier's expression of dull, wounded shock. "Did you imagine you would have to break gently to me news that I did not expect? I told you, Lennier, I have known Delenn since we were tiny children kneeling in temple for our first prayers. She can surprise me, at times, but I know better than to expect that she will change her course once she has made a decision like this."

"Then why...?"

"Why did I argue with her?" Mayan laughed, low and sweet like a bell. "Because I was angry. Because, as I told you, I am always running after her and finding that she is farther and farther from my grasp no matter how fast I run. If I ever caught her, I suspect, her flame would be so bright it would burn me as surely as it did poor Neroon."

"As... you mean the light of the Starfire Wheel."

Mayan dismissed this with a graceful gesture. "Oh, that, too, I suppose. But no, Lennier. The fire of the stars could never have burned Neroon as deeply as Delenn herself already did. I don't know the full narrative of that tale - if I did, and if it was mine to tell, I would be renowned throughout the universe for it, not just the holdings of the Minbari Federation! Their love was like one of the old stories from the times before Valen, when they were young. Whatever happened to them... it must have been a falling-out equally worthy of legend, because for decades after neither of them could bear to hear the other's name. They changed, both of them - hardened, like hot blades tempered in the waters of a glacier. When I saw that they could stand together, now, I thought perhaps..." she sighed. "There is no doubt in my mind that their love could have rekindled, if she had allowed it. And I think he would have been glad of it - as glad as either of us would have been, to finally hold her in our arms and have her see or think of no other. But it is just as unlikely, it seems. Neroon is a great hero, without a doubt, but in the end he is just like you and I. He reaches for her, and she exceeds his grasp and leaves him in shadow but for the brilliance reflected in her passing - he cannot endure her full brightness. Perhaps..." Her jaw trembled and she fell silent.

"Perhaps John Sheridan can?" Lennier suggested, his voice hollow and dull.

"Perhaps. Starkiller." Mayan shook her head. "Tell me only this one thing, Lennier. Tell me that he will not hurt her. Tell me that he will cherish her as she should be cherished. Tell me you who love her as I do have seen him to be worthy."

Lennier opened his mouth, but Mayan's dark eyes were on him and he could not find either the will or the eloquence to tell her a shadow-truth. What good would it do, anyway? She was Shaal Mayan, the greatest poet of the last thousand years. She would hear his true feelings no matter how carefully he concealed them in half-truth and deception; he did not have the skill to mislead one such as her. Nor, after the honesty and care she had shown him, did he want to. So he closed his lips again and remained silent, and bowed his head in sorrow and shame. 

For a long moment the chapel was so silent he thought perhaps Mayan had stood and gone. Then he felt her touch his hand, her small fingers grip his. "Then we shall do what we can, shall we not? As her friends, and as people who love her. We are small, but now bound as we are, we can do no less than to continue in the path our hearts have set for us." 

She squeezed his hand, then released it and reoriented herself toward the altar at the head of the temple. Lennier shifted, too, and they breathed in silence, centering. Then, in a sweet, confident voice, Mayan began to sing a prayer so old many said it pre-dated Valen and was no longer entirely appropriate and decent for modern Minbar. Lennier listened through the first reiteration, then, in a voice lower and much less certain but just as fervent, joined her on the second chorus and continued through as they both prayed for Delenn, for her future, and for the strength to stay at her side through what would come.


End file.
